debug: add notifier chain debugging

during some development we suspected a case where we left something
in a notifier chain that was from a module that was unloaded already...
and that sort of thing is rather hard to track down.

This patch adds a very simple sanity check (which isn't all that
expensive) to make sure the notifier we're about to call is
actually from either the kernel itself of from a still-loaded
module, avoiding a hard-to-chase-down crash.

Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

diff --git a/kernel/notifier.c b/kernel/notifier.c
index 823be11584efef8ef1d344f484cbf8c3d4f9617e..143fdd77dbf76f2afcb62d25c10bdb0fb5fc3314 100644 (file)
--- a/kernel/notifier.c
+++ b/kernel/notifier.c
@@ -21,6 +21,10 @@ BLOCKING_NOTIFIER_HEAD(reboot_notifier_list);
 static int notifier_chain_register(struct notifier_block **nl,
                struct notifier_block *n)
 {
+       if (!kernel_text_address((unsigned long)n->notifier_call)) {
+               WARN(1, "Invalid notifier registered!");
+               return 0;
+       }
        while ((*nl) != NULL) {
                if (n->priority > (*nl)->priority)
                        break;
@@ -34,6 +38,10 @@ static int notifier_chain_register(struct notifier_block **nl,
 static int notifier_chain_cond_register(struct notifier_block **nl,
                struct notifier_block *n)
 {
+       if (!kernel_text_address((unsigned long)n->notifier_call)) {
+               WARN(1, "Invalid notifier registered!");
+               return 0;
+       }
        while ((*nl) != NULL) {
                if ((*nl) == n)
                        return 0;
@@ -82,6 +90,14 @@ static int __kprobes notifier_call_chain(struct notifier_block **nl,
 
        while (nb && nr_to_call) {
                next_nb = rcu_dereference(nb->next);
+
+#ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_NOTIFIERS
+               if (!kernel_text_address((unsigned long)nb->notifier_call)) {
+                       WARN(1, "Invalid notifier called!");
+                       nb = next_nb;
+                       continue;
+               }
+#endif
                ret = nb->notifier_call(nb, val, v);
 
                if (nr_calls)

diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.debug b/lib/Kconfig.debug
index 8b5a7d304a5f5709cfb97436396916fc074db428..342858fbabbcfc415e5580ddfabf08f00b6d9a69 100644 (file)
--- a/lib/Kconfig.debug
+++ b/lib/Kconfig.debug
@@ -536,6 +536,16 @@ config DEBUG_SG
 
          If unsure, say N.
 
+config DEBUG_NOTIFIERS
+       bool "Debug notifier call chains"
+       depends on DEBUG_KERNEL
+       help
+         Enable this to turn on sanity checking for notifier call chains.
+         This is most useful for kernel developers to make sure that
+         modules properly unregister themselves from notifier chains.
+         This is a relatively cheap check but if you care about maximum
+         performance, say N.
+
 config FRAME_POINTER
        bool "Compile the kernel with frame pointers"
        depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && \